


f.t.w.

by indications



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13672938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indications/pseuds/indications
Summary: when it is wonderousit makes us whole





	f.t.w.

**Author's Note:**

> this scene was just so well-handled i couldn't help but transcribe it word for word exactly as it occurred in canon

Vax has been aware now, for some time, of his unique relationship to the force called Fate. She has a face, and a name, and She has been guiding his steps since before he ever learned them. It might be as accurate to call her Lady Luck, in fact, as the Raven Queen – and She walks with him, that night, and guides him.

            They duck in and out of several dour taverns before Scanlan takes the lead and they chance on Howarth’s; they stay, carousing and drinking, until Sean Gilmore comes sweeping through the door; everyone splits off to follow Keyleth when she’s had too much and then it’s just Vax and Gilmore, and Pike and Scanlan looking out the door the rest of the group left by.

            No such thing as random chance. He takes what is given to him.

            It’s late enough that they have some privacy, even as his sister peeks round the door curiously and the gnomes eye them from the bar.

            The back of his neck prickles. He tries to breathe steadyingly as they walk together to the far end of the room, but he catches instead the heady, almost intoxicating scent of perfume and smoke Gilmore always brings with him. Vax’s heart skips a beat, then another. Gilmore looks at him – expectantly? knowingly? with interest, certainly – as they post up on bar stools at a tiny table against the wall.

            How Vax would like to be sitting him down somewhere intimate, instead of failing to ignore his sister and Scanlan both intently watching.

            Vex’ahalia can read lips.

            He doesn’t realize he’s fidgeting until Gilmore reaches out a hand to take his.

            Gods, those eyes.

            “You wanted to speak to me?” Gilmore prompts – fond? patient? amused? all three – and Vax sits up straight and takes his hands seriously. Taking this seriously.

            “Sean,” he says. He wets his lips. He can do this – he must. “We’ve been friends a long time, you and I.”

            “That we have,” he murmurs something something Intimate Looks Across Bar Tables.

            Vax tries to tune out everything but the face of the man across from him. Gilmore does make it easy. He leans in, a little, across the small table, and Gilmore mirrors his posture, bringing their faces nearer each other. His usually-keen ears forget to register anything but a meaningless din around them. “We’ve talked of – we’ve talked circles around many things. Wide circles. Around a couple things in particular. Danced them. You and I, this dance-”

            “Vax’ildan.” Definitely amused now.

            “I’ve enjoyed it,” he soldiers on. “Dancing with you. Frankly I would that we – I’d have been glad to play it out. The way things were going. I’m quite fond of you,” he manages, before looking into those dark eyes is too much, and he stares down at their hands instead. “Only.”

            Only what? He’s taken? ‘It’s a long story? ‘You’ll have to get in line’? ‘How do you feel about sloppy sixths?’? And Sean doesn’t prompt him, just waits, so he fumbles on, “I’m already – It’s complicated.”

            Finally, a serious note coloring his rich low voice, “Is there someone else?”

            He cannot but see, then, as over Gilmore’s shoulder, Scanlan raises a glass as if to toast from across the room. The smile on his face suggests he’s heard every word.

            “Multiple someones,” Vax says miserably.

            It happens as if in slow motion, a terrible dream – Gilmore follows his gaze, and he and Scanlan make eye contact. Scanlan winks a smarmy, exaggerated wink. Pike notices Vax’s gaze and gives him an encouraging smile. Gilmore turns back to Vax looking incredulous.

            “Just how many ‘multiple someones’?” he asks.

            “Several,” Vax grits out. Over Gilmore’s shoulder, Scanlan is making an obscene hand gesture at him. Vax resists the urge to flee for the door.

            Gilmore laughs. “Well.”

            “It’s,” Vax says hopelessly.

            “Good for you,” he chuckles. At Vax’s raised eyebrows, he adds, “I was young once, too, you know.”

            Vax manages a weak grin.

            “Even the big fellow?” he asks.

           “Er,” Vax says.

            This prompts a laugh out of Gilmore – warm, easy, somehow a relief to hear – and Vax finds himself smiling along.

            “Well,” says Gilmore. “I can’t stay I’m not a little impressed, dear boy.”

            Vax’s tongue glues itself to the roof of his mouth. His mind produces nothing compelling either. How can it even be explained, when he has no words for it himself?

            “And so,” Sean prompts eventually. “You find yourself already well-occupied?”

            “Yes,” he says. “No. Yes, I am terribly occupied, much moreso than I ever anticipated being – when we first,” he says, losing track of the thread entirely, “When this began. You and I. Flirting. I had no idea. I’ve still no idea,” he adds, chancing a last damning glance over Gilmore’s shoulder. Pike has managed to browbeat Scanlan into letting off and the two of them are now leaning together conspiratorially. “Things have moved too quickly. I’d have liked to take my time with you. I care for you,” he says, “more dearly than I’ve let on, and there will never be words for saying so properly. I can’t do any of this properly. I can only do it honestly. While I have the chance. Will you have me?”

            Gilmore listens to all of this quietly, and at his last exclamation shakes his head. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so,” he begins, “as I’m sure this will all be terribly complicated to navigate, and I mean to respect that. What you have with your – with them,” he fumbles, “is yours, and it is important, but – Vax’ildan, if you want me, I am yours. The rest is immaterial.”

            “I do,” he hastens to say. “I never – Gods, I’ve thought so long on how I’d – what I’d say to you, if I ever managed to say anything, and I didn’t expect to lead with–”

            If he could just _stop looking_ at them, if he could just focus on the handsome man across from him instead of the audience just behind, perhaps-

            Gilmore’s eyes find his, and a smirk curls at the corner of his mouth. He raises one finger in the air. The murmur of the remaining patrons of the tavern mutes abruptly.

            “Perhaps this setting isn’t ideal for this kind of conversation.”

            “No,” Vax says helplessly, rapt.

            Gilmore’s full, shapely lips part to show teeth. A showman’s grin. He seems in his element with Vax’s full attention on him. “Yet I’m glad we chanced to meet here. Gladder still that this was the conversation you’d been waiting to have.”

            “I waited,” Vax agrees stupidly. “I’m not sure. A long time.” He can’t stop looking at his mouth – now his eyes, dark, crinkling at the corners – that smile, like he can read Vax’s mind and likes what he sees there-

            “Kiss me already, fool,” he says, and Vax is halfway leaning across the table already, one hand braced between them and the other reaching behind Gilmore’s head to pull him in.

            “You beautiful arcane bastard,” Vax says, smitten, dumb with it, and Gilmore leans in to meet him.

            They kiss, and it’s like no other kiss before with no one Vax has ever kissed – Gilmore is like no one he’s ever – warm and inviting and over too quickly, as Gilmore pulls back suddenly, turning around in his seat.

            Vex’ahalia is approaching. Scanlan and Pike are nowhere to be seen.

            “   **     ***   **   ,” she says, and Gilmore waves his hand, and she rolls her eyes. “ _Keyleth_. _Outside. Now._ ”

            “Excuse me?”

            “She’s just painted the front steps and the front of her own dress besides,” Vex says, looking from Vax to Gilmore and back again with an arch to her brow that speaks volumes. “We’re leaving. I’m sure she’d appreciate your company.”           

            “Ah,” he says.

            “My,” Gilmore says. “It seems the night’s gotten away from us.”

            “I should go,” Vax says. Vex has already turned to leave.

            “Indeed you should.”

            “I’ll. Call on you sometime.”

            “Soon, I hope.”

            “Yes.”

            Gilmore stands. He is radiant. Not more, or less, now that Vax has kissed him. The giddy fresh memory of that kiss, and the knowledge that he’s earned more, somehow, quickens his heart as Vax stands as well. The table between them is an imposition. Gilmore bows, shallow and theatrical, sweeping a wave off to the side as he bids him goodnight.

            Vax follows his sister into the cool night air, Keyleth hanging off Grog’s arm several paces down the road. They’re hooting and hollering, the band of them, making a wide path for themselves, and Vax laughs aloud, the giddiness overwhelming him.

            Vex looks over her shoulder at him, and he lets her look, lets her watch as he jogs up, up past her and ducking beside Keyleth.

            She startles hard, almost stumbling, the way only the very drunk do.

            “Vax!” she yells, right next to his ear. He doesn’t flinch. He laughs again.   

            “Keyleth!” he yells right back, not so loud but right at her ear, so she laughs too. She’s got puke on her dress, though not so terribly much. She smells like whiskey and thrown-up whiskey. She’s pale and her hair is frizzing out around her head in wisps. Grog’s letting her hold onto him, not seeming to notice the weight, which is lucky because she probably couldn’t walk on her own. Vax loves her. He loves her more, now, somehow, with Gilmore’s kiss a bright memory on his lips. “I kissed Shaun!” he says, very loudly, and she gives him a look of pure delight.

            “Woo!” she yells, wordless, pumping her fist in the air and nearly falling – he catches her – they stumble together, and he probably gets as much of her vomit on his shirt-front as hasn’t already seeped into the fabric of her dress. “You – you – kissed him! I saw you guys start to talking and I – Vax, you _love_ him!”

            “I do!” he says, laughing. The rest of them are starting to leave the two of them behind. He knows it’s bad when he’s too embarrassing for Vox Machina to be around. He doesn’t care, though. He doesn’t care at all. “I love him!”

            “You _love_ him!” she yells, like it’s as much a joy for her as it is for him, and that sets his heart to soaring, and he picks her up, and she yelps and they almost go down as he yells with her –

            “I love him! I love Shaun Gilmore! And I love you!”

            He tries to spin her, and they both go down. That sobers them up. They pick themselves up off the cobblestones to see a random woman staring at them from a streetcorner, clearly put off by their antics. They laugh, and shush each other, and dust each other off. The rest of Vox Machina has nearly rounded a corner without them, and catching up they realize how far they still have to walk – arm in arm, then, with Keyleth quickly getting exhausted and Vax sobering too far for his liking. They walk. They walk. They make it home.


End file.
